The Titanic Enigma (31 page)

*

In the control room Van Lee stood behind Tomkin, watching him manipulate a row of keypads. In front of them above the nearest control rack stood a large monitor. It offered a
murky image of the ocean floor 12,600 feet beneath the ship. In the centre of the screen stood the deep-sea submarine
JV1,
its lights splashing a puddle of radiance around it.

‘I’ve cut comms,’ Tomkins said. ‘This image,’ and he pointed to the screen, ‘is from a remote camera on the tether line that contains the fibre-optic
cables.’

‘What’s the status of the sub’s crew?’

‘The vessel is empty. They’re all out on the ocean floor.’

Van Lee raised an eyebrow. ‘You have the electrostatic charge ready?’

‘A few more seconds.’ Tomkin ran his fingers over the keypads, paused to check a display then resumed the tapping. ‘Ready.’

‘Do it.’

Chris Tomkin punched in a series of numbers and poised a finger over the return key. The other two mercenaries stopped what they were doing and came over. He hit the button.

A loud screech came from a speaker above the control panel. There was a blinding flash of yellow on the monitor and
JV1
exploded, 12,600 feet beneath
Armstrong.
The fragments
flew outward as if in slow motion. Under the water and at a pressure of almost 500 atmospheres, the burst of flame lasted only a fraction of a second.

Derham heard gunfire from far off, towards the stern. Stopping for a second, he pulled back against the wall. He needed to take stock. There had been six crewmen in the control
room when he left to make coffee. By now they might either be dead or out of action. That meant that out of the crew of twelve, there were, at best, only six others active on the ship. It had been
a surprise attack and so it was unrealistic to hold out much hope for the rest of his men. In fact, he could well be the only one left alive.

He moved along the passageway. A closed door stood to his left . . . the secondary comms hub. He went back against the wall, G3 held vertically, the side of the barrel close to his nose.
Springing forward, he jerked on the door handle and with one smooth action swung round into the room, sweeping his assault rifle around.

A man was leaning over the control panel. He had his rifle slung over his right shoulder, finger on the trigger, tapping a keyboard with his free hand. He started to straighten. Derham sprayed
the room with bullets and the man flew backwards against the wall, torn apart.

Derham dashed over to the panel, ran his fingers over the keys and heard a crackling sound over the monitor. He leaned in.
‘Mayday . . . Repeat Mayday . . . This is USS
Armstrong
. . . we are boarded and under attack . . . Repeat, we are boarded and under attack.
’

More static. Then a muffled voice. Derham could not understand a word. He cut in. ‘Cannot hear you. Please repeat. Over.’

More unintelligible words, static. Then a loud hum and the line died.

‘Shit!’ Derham exclaimed. ‘They must’ve cut comms in the control room.’ He was about to try to reroute the system when he heard voices from the corridor. He dived
behind the console.

The door eased open. Through a tiny slit in the corner of the console, he could see two men in black fatigues, faces in shadow, weapons ready. They slipped into the room.

Derham jumped up, unleashed a spray of bullets and ducked back down. Leaning forward, he peered through a crack.

‘Drop the gun.’

The voice came from behind him.

Derham let the weapon fall to the floor.

‘Get up.’

Derham rose to his feet, felt the man’s rifle against the nape of his neck and knew he was a dead man.

‘Sergei. Stop. I want him alive for a while longer.’ The voice came from the doorway.

A man with steely blue eyes crossed the room, his rifle lowered at his side. The man with the G3 at his neck hissed and Derham felt the barrel pull away from his skin.

‘Who are you?’ Derham snapped.

He ignored the question and stopped a few feet away from the console. ‘You are Captain Jerry Derham. I’ve read a lot about you.’

‘Why are you here? What do you want?’

‘Well, captain. You are here to retrieve an artefact from the wreck of the
Titanic,
while our job is to stop you. My employers would rather whatever it is you are looking for
stayed put.’

Van Lee stepped forward and removed Derham’s pistol and knife. Then he spun him to face Sergei, pulled some twine from a pouch in his combat trousers and bound the captain’s hands
behind his back.

Van Lee led the way out into the corridor. They took a right and followed a straight narrow corridor to the steps up to the control room.

Derham surveyed the carnage and forced himself to say nothing, to remain icily calm.

Two of the mercenaries were still at the console. ‘Steve, Al,’ Van Lee snapped. ‘You traced the sub’s crew?’

‘Nothing yet,’ Al replied without looking up.

Van Lee swung round to Derham. ‘Excuse the mess.’ Then he kicked one of the corpses close to the control panel where Chris Tomkin stood. He pointed to the monitor. ‘I thought
you’d like to see this,’ he added. ‘The wreckage of your clever submarine.’

Derham blanched.

‘The crew are out on the ocean floor, but they won’t last long, of course.’

Derham held Van Lee’s stare. Without warning, he spun round, raised his leg and landed his boot square in the throat of the man called Sergei standing a few feet behind him. They all heard
his windpipe snap. He dropped his gun and brought his hands to his neck, gasping for air.

As Derham whirled back round Van Lee took a step back and slammed his fist hard into the captain’s face, knocking him backwards into the injured gunman. The two men fell to the floor in a
tangle of limbs.

Van Lee forced Derham up and onto his knees, totally ignoring his colleague writhing in his death throes. He landed a kick to the captain’s chest, causing him to double up in agony. A
second kick to the jaw sent Derham sprawling back across the cold metal floor. Van Lee stepped forward; Chris Tomkin came round behind Derham.

‘Get up, you fuck!’ Van Lee screamed.

Derham slowly struggled back to his knees, his hands still tied behind him. He was reeling in pain and blinded by blood running into his eyes. Tomkin grabbed his hair and yanked his head back.
He pulled an Ek Commando knife from his belt and brought the blade round to Derham’s throat. Glancing up, Tomkin held Van Lee’s eyes, waiting for the order.

‘Lower your weapons.’ The shout came from the door into the control room. Four men charged into the room, HKMP5 sub-machine guns at their hips. Two more came in a second wave and
charged across the room, sidestepping the corpses and taking up position close to the control panels. The men were dressed in assault armour, helmets and goggles, with badges bearing the impression
of a winged dagger and the words ‘Who Dares Wins’ on each sleeve.

The four mercenaries froze. The SAS leader took two paces over to where Derham knelt, Tomkin’s knife still at his throat. He stood behind the mercenary, bringing the barrel of his weapon
to the back of his head. ‘Drop the knife and back away,’ he said calmly.

Tomkin barely moved a muscle, but the soldier sensed instantly what he was about to do. With stunning speed the SAS officer grabbed Tomkin’s knife hand and pulled the trigger of his
HKMP5.

A soldier helped Derham to his feet, and the SAS commander whirled on Van Lee and the other two. ‘Drop your weapons, or you can follow your friend.’ He flicked his assault weapon
towards Tomkin’s headless corpse.

‘I’m OK,’ Derham snapped as one of the SAS men helped him to his feet. Three of the British soldiers had stripped Van Lee and the two other mercenaries of
their weapons, bound their hands and had started to escort them out.

Derham dashed over to the control panel and stabbed at the keypad. ‘Commander Milford . . . do you copy?’

Nothing but an electronic hiss.

‘Milford, come in.’

Derham turned a dial and the speaker emitted a high-pitched whine.

‘The bastards have cut the comm link,’ Derham spat and slammed a palm down onto the control panel.

‘Captain?’ The leader of the SAS team was standing beside him.

Jerry turned and saluted. ‘Captain Derham.’

‘Major Graham Davenport. We were shadowing you . . . received your Mayday.’

Derham exhaled. ‘I’m extremely grateful, sir,’ he said. ‘But three of my people are down there on the ocean floor.’

The major looked at the screen. ‘The sub has gone.’

‘Yes, but they were already some way from it . . . I hope.’

‘How is that possible?’

Derham glanced at a clock above the control panel. ‘I can’t explain. We have a second sub. I have to get down there.’ He spun round.‘I would like you to assume command of
the ship. I hope some of my men have survived.’

‘We’ll begin a search,’ Davenport said and watched Derham race to the door.

*

There was no time to run through the routine checks, but
JV1
and
JV2
were kept on standby 24/7. Derham had no comms between
JV2
and
Armstrong
, so he would be riding solo the whole way with no navigational aid from the surface.

As the sub shot away from beneath the ship, Derham let it accelerate to maximum speed. He glanced at the depth gauge, watching the digits change rapidly as on the screens the light began to
fade.

*

The monitors displayed an image of the area around where
JV1
had stood.
JV2
was still too far away to make out anything other than blurred clumps of dark and
light marking out the cargo hold and other large pieces of the
Titanic
.

Derham was working robotically. He could not contemplate the thoughts trying to seep into his consciousness. He could not accept that Jane Milford, Kate and Lou were dead. But at the same time
he was processing the situation logically. The only way the three of them could still be alive is if they had made it to the cargo hold and got inside before their suits gave out. He had to hang on
to that hope.

He adjusted course with short bursts of the engines. The on-board computer was guiding the ship automatically but he was able to override manually to compensate for random fluctuations in the
currents. He glanced at the image on the control panel monitor and noticed it had cleared. Now he could just make out individual features and spotted the wreckage of
JV1
strewn across the
ocean floor.

The cargo hold stood to the right of the screen. He swivelled the bow camera thirty degrees to starboard. It showed up scattered chunks of debris. Then he found the ravine, a black gash in the
earth running north-south, the ends disappearing beyond the range of the camera.

‘There’s only one way to do this,’ Derham said aloud. He leaned forward, tapped at the controls and brought up a management screen on one of the monitors. In the bottom-right
corner was a set of parameters . . . speed, depth, position and half a dozen other stats. Inputting a series of command codes, he overrode the entire automated piloting system, and running expert
fingers over the keypads, he transferred control to manual and focused on the bow camera.

The submarine was remarkably manoeuvrable. He brought it round so that it sliced through the water horizontally sixty yards above the ocean floor, then he slowed the vessel to a sedate twenty
knots. On the view screen the terrain streamed past, the compacted sand and shingle a muddy grey in
JV2’s
powerful beams.

Derham was approaching the ravine. He knew the team had used a nano-carbon bridge to cross it . . . assuming they had reached that far.
JV2
would have to be set down on the far side of
the crevasse and he would have to use the bridge to reach the cargo hold.

Using the sonar Derham could tell that he was closing on the location of the nano-carbon bridge. One hundred yards west . . . fifty yards. He guided the sub to port. The sonar told him the
bridge was now ten yards away . . . five.

He reached it and circled slowly, adjusting the camera under the vessel and changing focus so he could get a clear image. Then he saw it, the tattered ends of the nano-carbon bridge, shredded
lengths stretching down out of sight into the ravine.

Panning the cameras, he tried to find clues, bodies, anything that could tell him what had happened. On the second sweep he caught a glimpse of some metal shards.

He adjusted a toggle on the control panel and rose ten yards. Realigning the camera, he could make out the shape of the cargo hold. According to a set of stats in the bottom right of the screen,
it was 106 yards west of the ravine.

Moving
JV2
slowly over the ocean floor, Derham checked the sonar, adjusting it to probe the sand. The computer displayed a map of the seismic make-up of the terrain between the ravine
and the cargo hold. It appeared as a series of curved lines a little like contours on an elevation map. The information was incomplete but more accurate than anything they had pictured from the
surface.

Pulling back on the throttle so that
JV2
drifted in the current, Derham leaned forward to study the flowing lines on the monitor. He ran a finger along the glass tracing the contours
and analysing the stability of a patch of ocean floor about twenty yards square. He stopped and stabbed the screen.

‘There!’ he said aloud, and knew even this, the most stable spot around, could easily be a deadly place to put down. But there was no choice. This was life or death. If there was any
chance of rescuing the team from
JV1,
he had to land there.

Flicking the toggle on the panel, he turned to port, punched in a set of nav figures and pulled away from the crevasse, one eye on the camera showing the sand.

The landing was a masterclass in manoeuvring the
JV2
and it came to rest with an almost imperceptible bump. On the screen, Derham could see the outline of cargo hold 4. The monitor told
him it stood precisely thirty-seven yards to port.